Joint Libraries among Congregations

With budgets tight, many churches do not have a lot of funds available to maintain very large libraries, yet many Christian titles are not always readily available in public libraries. I have been considering trying to contact some of the churches in our community to see if they would be interested in establishing a joint facility that could offer a wider range of books than any one congregation could.

Is anyone aware of any communities where churches have established this kind of reading room/library concept? It seems like it might be a great outreach combined with a coffee house ministry, as well as offering church members the opportunity to be exposed to a much wider range of solid Christian authors than they may now have access to.

Several years ago, there was an article in the Church and Synagogue Library Association publication about a library similar to that. The website looks active at: http://www.ourfatherslibrary.org/

Thanks for the information--this is what I have in mind, so it is good to see it could be workable.

hsl2000 - re message #1 - Now that is a good reason to be on LibraryThing! I could envision myself, along with several of the other librarians from churches in town that we partner with on ministry to the community adding all the books from our respective libraries onto a joint account and tagging them appropriately. Such as tagging a book in my church's library with our name, along with the classification of the book. Then members of all churches, or pastors, could look to see if there is a book they want to borrow. The vision is grand, but I know I don't have it in me time-wise or energy-wise right now to plan and execute it. It would be especially good in our community since our last major Christian bookstore has just closed down.

The promotion needed, the training of the librarians and the time involved to get the books added...the mind boggles.